Doomsday Reels: Left Behind III - World at War

Left Behind III: World at War (2005)

The Director

Craig R. Baxley

The Actors

Louis Gossett Jr. (President Gerald Fitzhugh), Kirk Cameron (Buck Williams), Brad Johnson (Rayford Steele), Jessica Steen (Carolyn Miller), Janaya Stephens (Chloe Steele), Gordon Currie (Nicolae Carpathia), Arnold Pinnock (Bruce Barnes)

The Trailer

The Cause

The Rapture

The Story

"Funny thing about dreams: When you're asleep, no matter what happens, no matter how crazy it might be, it all makes sense. I was there when millions of people vanished off the face of the Earth, but I didn't wake up. I cheered as the world came together in the name of peace. Race, politics, and religion no longer mattered. I should have known it was too good to be true and maybe it was. And when on single man rose to power, to rule the entire world, I watched it all happen. I helped him get there. That's when the dream turned into a nightmare. And like that instant in a dream where you fall, that when I should have sat bolt upright in my bed. But I didn't. I can only hope that I'm not trapped here forever, that I'm not already dead spending an eternity in Hell. I can only pray God decides to awaken me soon." - President Gerald Fitzhugh

The Rundown

In my reviews of the last two entries of this trilogy my one big issue with the films (aside from their indefensible and disgusting use of Christian theology and mythology to justify the way they encourage shitty behavior) is that they're just not entertaining at all. The plots feel low-stakes and lifeless and the bits of intrigue and drama are actually just as if not more boring than the long sermons. With the third movie in the misguided Left Behind series, steps were actually taken to address that one (and only that one) concern.

Left Behind III is directed by Craig R. Baxley. If that name sounds familiar then it's because Baxley directed the cult action/horror Dolph Lundgren vehicle Dark Angel (AKA I Come in Peace.) Baxley can't save the movie from itself but he does seem to be making his own half-movie starring Louis Gossett Jr. and even though that movie isn't very good it's still ten times more enjoyable than anything else happening in this series so far.

Louis Gossett Jr. plays President Fitzhugh, the American President who has taken Nicolae Carpathia's promises at face value. One day while out skeet-shooting with the vice president, the VP confesses that he has been tipping off an anti-UN militia who have found out that Carpathia is planning to use the recently de-activated nuclear arsenals of every country on Earth against them. Shortly thereafter he is killed by a rocket-propelled grenade when a group of soldiers attack the president's motorcade. The president falls in with the militia to reveal Nicolae Carpathia's conspiracy and save mankind

Meanwhile back with the main characters of the last two movies we find intrepid reporter Buck Williams marrying Chloe Steele and her father, the most boring man in the world, Rayford Steel marrying some lady who didn't do much of anything in the last movie in the bombed out ruins of the church they used as a staging ground in the two previous films. It seems that as always, something interesting happened to these characters when we weren't watching.

It seems Nicolae Carpathia has begun taking a hard-line stance against Christians so they're forced to smuggle bibles like drugs and hide in basements in major cities so Carpathia just begins poisoning bibles. As he attempts to fight the plague, the pastor Bruce Barnes (now played by Arnold Pinnock) comes down with the malady himself and so does Chloe Steele. This harrowing plot ends when a dying Barnes suggest that they do communion and discover that this incurable virus is cured by... red wine. Barnes dies anyway.

Rayford is still working as Nicolae Carpathia's personal pilot but since Nicolae has no scenes with any of the characters of the previous films (except Bruce in a brief dream sequence) he mostly just confronts his mistress from the first movie who has naturally turned her cheating evil ways into being Carpathia's personal lap dog. What little conflict is introduced in this storyline is quickly waved away and resolved with no repercussions. Rayford continues to do nothing for the duration of the film.

Speaking of doing nothing: Kirk Cameron spends 95% of this movie waiting in a house for something to do only to bravely go outside at the end and tell a couple people about God. I don't know if this was a mandate on Cameron's part but I'm choosing to believe it's because Craig Baxley found him insufferable and decided to film as much of the film as possible without him.

Two thirds of this movie is the same as the previous two. It's boring, aimless, and badly acted aside from Arnold Pinnock who does a dynamite job picking up the character that Clarence Gilyard Jr. brought far too much talent to in the previous films. There's not much of anything worth watching there, as before.

But the A-plot with The President is full of action, drama, intrigue. Nicolae Carpathia actually fully acts like a bad guy for the first time, Louis Gossett Jr. gets to creep around with a gun and fall apart mentally. In the climax, he fires his pistol at Carpathia, the bullets harmlessly passing through the antichrist and killing the secret service agent who betrayed him. Then Carpathia uses Carrie magic (his powers are still wildly inconsistent and ill-defined) to throw The President through a plate glass window out the top of a skyscraper onto a car below. The Preisdent sits up, dusts himself off, and runs away.

"That's not humanly possible." monologue's Carpathia, pointlessly, staring in the general direction of up as though God is an annoying neighbor kid who keeps trampling his petunias. The movie's big thesis statement is that God won't let you die until it's your time so we find out that The President was not meant to die because he needed to come back a couple days later after Carpathia had started World War 3 so that he can get The Antichrist admitting he's the antichrist on the phone and then get killed by a huge fucking missile that blows up Carpathia's headquarters. The last shot of the movie, and of the series, is of Nicolae Carpathia striding unscathed out of the burning ruins of his evil lair.

I don't know why the series ended with the third entry, I'm guessing Cloud Ten pictures let the rights lapse or Kirk Cameron became too much of a kook to work with or the movies were costing too much and not making enough. I'm not sure and I don't care. The films have garbage messages but they're also just pointless adaptations. There are so many things the various people attached to these films could have done to speed things along but the movies avoid conflict and drama as much as possible. The biggest dramatic moment of the second movie was Chloe coming to Buck's apartment unannounced and assuming that his unpleasant roommate was his fiance because Chloe Steele is dumb. For this one it's that Rayford and Buck are both overprotective of Chloe. If not for the President Fitzhugh a-plot (and the endless talents of Mr. Louis Gossett Jr.) there'd be nothing here to see. Even as is, there's not enough to see to go out of your way to do so. So unless Left Behind III is currently playing in a direction that you're already looking, don't bother with it.

What this series needs is some new blood. It needs a bigger budget, better special effects, a narrower point of view, and someone really compelling in the lead. Somebody who's leading man material but capable of really getting into a role, somebody who won an Oscar. Somebody like Nicolas Cage. Man, I need to write this down, this is gold...

The Shill

Left Behind III: World at War is available on DVD and Amazon Instant as well as the personal DVD collection of anyone who has ever firebombed a Planned Parenthood.